


the good with the bad

by bettercrazythanboring



Category: Morning Glories
Genre: Character Study, Denial of Feelings, F/F, Gen, content includes issues 7 and 15 so be warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 21:45:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1403542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bettercrazythanboring/pseuds/bettercrazythanboring
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you told Zoe yesterday a simple cheerleading practice session could change two lives that much, she'd tell you to stop watching Bring It On and harbor no hopes of beating her for a spot on the team.</p><p>Today... today is a different story. Today, she might just strangle you if you told anyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the good with the bad

The moment your eyes focus through the yellow-tinted, fingerprint-covered glass and onto the interlocked bodies, that's the moment everything changes. You'll remember it later as a whirl of motion and blurry instincts you could never grasp quite as well as a pair of wedges on your way out of Macy's, but now, right now, you freeze up only for as long as it takes your brain to take in the sight of that hairy arm on Sarah's wrist, the muffled sound of her protests snapping you out of it right as you realize his fly is half-open.

And then the door crashes against the classroom wall and your bag drops to the floor, and that's the last thing you notice before  _War and Peace_ , whose heaviness you've been complaining about all week, falls out of your limp fingers that are too busy reaching for Sarah to prevent Mr. Hammond from cracking his neck on the table. (You only notice the sound as far as it assures the termination of immediate threat. All you see and hear now is her.)

The last of the scattered papers don't yet manage to reach the ground before your hands are on her arms, and your voice comes out more frantic than you've ever allowed it to be before. (Not when the purple bruises on your mother's neck appeared in your dreams for the three hundred and seventy-eighth time, not when you had to leave David behind so long ago, not when your parents gave you the wrong phone for your fourteenth birthday.) It comes automatically, brushing her sweat-damp hair back from her forehead and tugging her top back up, and checking her pulse, which matches your own erratic heartbeat.

You'll wonder later why it took you so long to notice that she paid no attention to your voice or your fingers, or how your entire body vibrated with the need to help, that her eyes stayed firmly on the disgusting, crooked shell of a person lying abandoned below you both. You only do after she pushes your hand away with vacant eyes and little strength and stammers, almost terrified, "He… He isn't moving. Why isn't he moving?"

This girl that you only now realize you'd possibly lay your life on the line for if it came to that turns to you with more accusation than relief in her glassy eyes and, for the first time, you, too, glance down at your English teacher's head, bent at an awkward angle and decorated with open eyelids over perfectly still pupils.

"What…  _What the fuck did you do, Zoe?!_ "

* * *

 

No. No… No, no, no, no. No!

You're not sure whether you only think the words or if you hurl them at her with the same force they use to bang against the inside of your skull, but the entire world became an enemy the moment you heard her say, "we were in love," and you no longer quite care whether she goes deaf tonight.

All the dreams that were never meant for you linger in the air—the sorority you'd join in college, whose members you'd blackmail because you know everything and are even better at finding out things you're not supposed to; the career in law crushing mens' spirits while they're too busy staring at your red lips to notice the words coming out of them; the family you've always planned on having way down the line, which you say you want because it's the expected answer, disregarding the long-buried, neglected seed of hope between your ribs that yearns to connect with friends, family, lovers—and be connected with back—which wants it for  _real_ , for the right reasons.

They linger right on the bridge of your nose, the things you were never supposed to plan for or want, because that's not your path, and it's not what you were born for, and you know you're more important than another cubicle worker in a sea of billions just like him, that you're meant to change the world and it was too small for you anyway, but despite how open your eyes might be, you are still a fifteen-year-old girl whose everyday routine includes stretching in tight yoga pants for an hour and scouring the web for good online shopping apps, and reading Cosmo tips that turn you even more off sex than you already were.

You are a girl who's always wanted what you can't have, because you already have everything else. (And could steal everything in between, with one snap of your fingers—if you ever decided it was important enough to have.) The normalcy, the bitchiness, the power, the future... the happiness. None of that is yours to have, not really. But it  _is_  hers.

And the one thing you've never understood is why people pull shit like this when they could have everything they ever dreamed about as easily as making a few better decisions. When they don't know their end, their ultimate fate, as well as the alphabet. When the ignorance that prevents them from understanding anything real or true about the world also spares them the misery of having a greater purpose, of not being able to close their eyes anymore when it gets to be too much; it spares them from knowing the life they lead is not theirs to live, was never  _ever_  theirs.

You understood it better when you were younger, and you've no doubt that when the time comes, you won't forget (as you do now, so often) that you are above all this, that you are better, that you are god and others are simply mindless hives of ants to use as pawns for your mission, but here, now there is a precious girl in your arms who made a mistake, and you've long since begun seeing this path of purpose and martyrdom as a burden, a sacrifice you  _will_ —but don't want to—make.

Perhaps this is your little rebellion, to join the pile of dresses you hand the unpleasant secondhand store clerk every month—because shoplifting is your version of retail therapy and you have no use for that many—and the cheetos you have before bed every night like clockwork, but even if she  _is_  an ant, she feels as real and important as you do, only she has none of your strength or tenacity, and she will not survive this on her own, and so the words come out without hesitation.

" _We have to hide the body._ "

* * *

 

Sarah crumbles when you shove him into the furnace. You only stare into the flames and plan dinner in your head. Salad, probably.

She cries and cries, in the basement, in the gym—in the car she's driving because you can't tell gas apart from brakes and wouldn't want a license even if you were old enough—all the way to your house and probably beyond. You lay one hand lightly on hers for exactly three seconds, and climb out without another word, and all the sympathy, pity for her disappeared the moment you started wondering why, out of all the ants on this planet who make life-changing mistakes as often as they inhale, she's the one you decided to stake what illusion of a life you have on, whatever little hope of normalcy you have to cling to.

Why you—who felt nothing watching the flames eat up a human being, who never batted an eyelash at the horror movies that made your classmates vomit and go into therapy, who always felt only fleeting attachment to your parents—risked spending whatever time you have left before your destiny clicks into place in prison, or worse, for a delusional slut you'd only ever considered a partner in boredom. Never the empty word that is "friend".

Not in the privacy of your own thoughts, anyway.

The pink pajama shorts she gave you for your birthday bear many a cheese flavoring stain, and gain even more tonight as you munch on cheetos in the soft haven of your numerous pillows. Your eyes stay on the cat-shaped alarm clock ticking away your finity, and the phone gets picked up and thrown into the sheets about half a dozen times as you debate whether to call her and make sure she got home without incident, and your mind clouds up eventually, and the only thought on it when you drift away completely repeats over and over again.

 _Why?_  Why did you risk it?

* * *

 

She never learns. Through the hushed rumors and the loud rumors, through the reporters lounging in front of your school, through the dozens of stolen chats you two exchange, she never learns. You thought, when you decided to help her, that you could open her eyes to the mistakes she'd made. You thought you could help her grow, to see things differently, without the haze of unhealthy morals and unresolved daddy issues. You thought you could help her.

But weeks pass and you get an impression that formed vaguely, but becomes sharper, clearer, every time you talk to her, and you're sure now that she sees nothing wrong with her actions, no ounce of responsibility she had in causing this mess. She doesn't learn.

She only blames  _you_  for taking her "love" away from her.

Blames you for keeping your word and for being concerned, and for walking in on things she wouldn't have done that day if she had any common sense in her. Blames you for trying to  _protect_  her. And, truth be told, you're starting to blame yourself, too.

So when she says she's had enough, you believe her, but so have you. Your mascara drips down onto the pier for some pigeon to shit on, and you scream at her, and you still don't know, even as you demand she know the answer, why you did it; any of it. Something breaks inside you when she still shows no signs of remorse, and it's not easy for your fingers to let go of this moment when you push her over the railing, into the deep ocean below.

* * *

 

She would've been ostracized, you justify yourself. Her life would be no life at all, you think. People whose effect on reality is miniscule, who remain passive and weak on the outskirts of the universe's fabric, they barely live anyway, right? If you can't learn and adapt, the world finds a way to dispose of you, one way or another. It was a favor you did her, sparing her that pain.

You have yourself to think about, you reason. You are selfish and you don't care about anyone who might interfere with your precious high school routine you work so hard to keep intact every single day, and maybe you wouldn't have been punished in any way, but you'd still be the girl who killed her teacher. The girl whose best friend did  _that_.

She was just an ant, you say. You are a god, and matters of the mindless masses are nothing to concern yourself with. One more, one less, who cares?

The truth is, you don't know why you did it. Not the helping, not the killing. All that is certain is the emptiness in the nerves of your arms and the hollow thoughts gracing you more and more often, and you don't know what any of it is or what it means.

So you go up to Patrick Wergel one day—between walking past the English classroom with a tiny speck of blood under the teacher's desk and overhearing Betsy and Clara talk about how much they miss Sarah—and kiss him right on the lips. You kiss him again, and again, for weeks after that, and you let him believe you are everything you're supposed to be and hope that someday you'll forget what hearing her head crash against the water felt like, and finally put it, and her, behind you.

It's only when you know you're supposed to kill again that you start to wonder if you made a mistake in depriving her of life. You kill those like you, and you kill those like her, and it doesn't feel any different—just flesh and blood, fading away before your eyes. Maybe everything you were so sure you knew, everything they told you, was a big lie, and instead of being above people like her, you are below.

When you're still holding the knife meant for Hunter and telling yourself it won't hurt this time, in that split second when the shot is fired but you have not perished yet, you wonder if this is your punishment. That you killed her and it was a mistake, and you did not learn anything, and the universe found a way to remove you.

And right then and there, you still don't know why she's the one you put your whole life on the line for. Fitting, really.


End file.
